Premiere Pro lost 4 hours of my work

[JARedmondWA]

Last night/early this morning, I finished about 4 hours of work. I backed up the containing directory (to a different HDD).

This morning I discovered that the latest project file did not contain those last 4 hours. This is the second time something like this happened. From now on I'll aim to snapshot a big project every 1-2 hours.

[JARedmondWA]

By the way, the backup on the other HDD had the same problem. Specifically, the latest project file showed date/time modified as about 4 hours before the point when I stopped working on PP.

[Kevin-Monahan]

How were you backing up JA? I use Auto Save and Edit > Duplicate to build up my backups. You must choose File > Save before backing up. Did you do that? Sorry if I do not understand your process.

Thanks,
Kevin

[JARedmondWA]

I was doing Alt/File/Save As every so often. That of course went to the directory of the video. I'll take a look at Auto Save and Edit/Duplicate.

By "backup" I meant I used robocopy (this is on Windows) to copy ("mirror," strictly speaking) the whole directory to a different HDD.

[JARedmondWA]

OK, I took a quick look at Edit/Duplicate. This appears to be a method to make a copy of part of a video ("clip") and paste the copy somewhere else on the timeline. I don't see how that would help in my case.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi JA,

Sorry to confuse some terminology. Edit > Duplicate inside of Premiere Pro is for backing up sequences. 

I meant to say that you can right-click on the project file in Finder or Explorer and choose Duplicate. That will back up your project file. Similarly, File > Save As can work to back up project files, but I prefer to Save A Copy.

Preferences > Auto Save is where you can adjust how often backups are made. Check the box to save a backup to your Creative Cloud folder. That has saved me before. Project Settings > Scratch Disks is where to choose where you can save Auto Saves.

Automatic backups can sometimes be unpredictable, so duplicating or saving copies of project files is done as a fail-safe.

Thanks,
Kevin

[JARedmondWA]

In Windows 10 File Explorer, there is no Duplicate. What does work, however, is to right-click Copy and then right-click Paste in the directory (or wherever one wants); if one pastes in the same directory, one gets a new file named "whatever - Copy.prproj," which is good enough.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Sorry about that. I don't have access to my Windows machine today. Glad copy/paste works for you.